Wasserman Schultz IT aide arrested trying to leave the country

Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s top information technology guy, the Pakistani-born Imran Awan — who was under investigation by the FBI for theft and cybersecurity-tied abuses — was arrested at Dulles International Airport as he tried to flee the country.

And now Democrats are rushing to defend him, saying he’s the target of massive federal Islamophobia. What a crock.

Wasserman Schultz said through a spokesman that Awan was simply a “part-time employee, but his services have been terminated,” Mediaite reported.

Oh, but he’s more, much more, than that.

Awan is the same guy who has made big bucks on the back of taxpayers for years, all while having largely unfettered access to computer-stored data from House Democrats. Can you say security breach? He’s also the same guy who just made a curious transfer of $283,000 to two individuals in Pakistan from his Longworth House Office Building, as reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation. He’s also the same guy whose wife and children just left America for Pakistan, reportedly carrying more than $12,000 in cash.

And he’s also the same guy who’s been under FBI investigation for some time for allegedly double-billing House members for items like computers, iPads and other technological equipment. He had quite a racket going on; Awan’s two brothers and their wives also served as IT staffers for House Democrats — for the last 10 years or so.

It’s a family business. A lucrative one, as well.

Between the time Awan started working for Wasserman Schultz in 2005 and his family members were let go, earlier this year, they had collectively earned more than $4 million in tax paid salaries. In February, House members were alerted to potential for abuse and let go Awan’s family members.

Until just recently, Wasserman Schultz refused to fire Awan, however, and even went so far in her defense of him that she recently refused Capitol Police’s request to search a laptop belonging to him.

Agents with the U.S. Capitol Police, Border Protection and the FBI stopped him Tuesday at the airport, where he was headed to Pakistan by way of Qatar.

Part of the investigation involves what information the family had access to, and what they did with it. Awan, for instance, has been charged with fraudulently taking out mortgages as part of one of several alleged financial schemes — conducted at a time when he had access to emails and files of dozens of members of Congress and to information tied to Wasserman Schultz’s former Democratic National Committee organization. Feds also think the family may have put sensitive House information on the “cloud,” leaving it open for others to view.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, for instance, suggested police have simply framed Awan because he was born in Pakistan.

“Awan and his family are of Pakistani descent and according to Democrat sources, their ethnicity is ‘a factor in the attention they’re receiving,’ ” Mediaite reported.

Democrats truly couldn’t be any more blinded by partisanship. They’re obviously so willing to do the catering of their leftist base — to fight hard for their open-border activists, their Muslim apologists in the lobby world, their progressive bulldogs — they’d put the security of the nation second to the get-away car of a federally suspected fraudster. Makes you wonder what Democrats are really trying to protect — what Democrats are really trying to hide.